After Hours (10 page)

I whirled around, the world gone crimson as a stab wound. “Get the fuck out of here,”
I said, so quiet and slow and deadly I gave myself chills.

“Truth hurts,” Marco said, and his smug-ass grin was the final straw. When he got
inside his cab and slammed the door, I spat on his windshield and gave him the finger.
In the half second it took, my brain screamed
Mistake!
ten thousand times over.

His door flew open.

“You fucking touch my truck—”

Logic told me to run but my body was marching to meet his, some idiot bit of my programming
thirsty for blood and shrieking
Mama bear! Activate!
I fisted my car key and slammed it against his gleaming hood, drew it with a squeal
down the perfect, glossy red paint, and wished with every cell in my body I was rending
his chest open.

Then his hands were around my arms, thumbs digging into my flesh. Thoughtless, I drove
my fists up between us the way I’d practiced a thousand times in restraints. I broke
his hold and thumped his chin. He grunted, and when he opened and closed his mouth
his teeth were pink. He must have bitten his tongue.

“You fucking psycho cunt.”

“Excuse me?” Twice in one week I get
cunt
hurled at me? I couldn’t hit Lonnie but I could sure as fuck hit Marco. I came at
him flailing, but he grabbed my arms again and shook me hard.

I heard Amber yell, “Let her go!” I heard gravel grinding under our shoes, heard Jack
begin to wail.

“Stay on the steps!”

Marco’s grip on my arm was gone. He charged me a pace and gave me a hard shove. My
feet weren’t quick enough, and I stumbled, trying to catch myself on my car. But I
was too far away, and my elbow banged dully against the door; then pain exploded in
my face as my temple hit the side mirror.

I heard Amber yell my name. Jack’s wailing turned to shrieks. It was the latter that
had pebbles beneath my palms and my arms shoving me to kneeling, my hand finding the
car door as I forced my legs to work and let me stand. My face hurt, but it was dry.
My elbow hurt, but the joint didn’t scream when I bent it. One of the knees of my
scrubs was split and my skin felt raw, but I didn’t care. I stared at Marco, stared
right in his face with adrenaline pulsing through me like pure, molten hate.

With my eyes I told him,
I’m gonna fuck you up for making my family cry.
But my body hurt, and my brain got its say. My brain said he’d win, if he wanted.

What he wanted, apparently, was nothing more to do with any of us.

“Crazy bitches.” He hawked and spat on the dirt and climbed back inside his truck,
reversing out of the driveway as slow and lazy as you please.

When he rolled onto the street and drove off, I realized I’d won. I was hurt and scraped
up, but I’d won that fight, somehow.

Amber hurried over, holding Jack to her chest with one arm, smoothing my hair back
with her free hand.

“Am I bleeding?”

“No. But it’s real red. Lemme get you some frozen peas or something.”

“I have to get back to work. And
you
have to call the cops, and tell them where he lives and what happened. Tell them
I’ll come and give a statement, the second I’m off work.”
While the bruise is still nice and heinous,
I thought grimly.

“Okay.” She said it too quietly for me to trust.

“Do it today, Amber. Do it
right now
. Give them my number, so they can call and arrange for me to meet with them. Don’t
you dare pussy out.”

“Okay, okay.”

I nearly believed her that time.

Despite my speeding, I got back late. I hurried to the empty locker room and changed
into fresh scrub bottoms and shoved the ones with the ripped, crusty knee deep underneath
the wadded paper towels in the trash can. I checked my eye in the mirror over the
sink, and it was pretty gross. My lid was puffy and pink and shiny, the skin under
my eyebrow purple, radiating red. It was a job for an eye patch, not concealer. Sadly
I had neither, so I rinsed my face and smoothed my hair, and headed for the sign-in
room, walking as tall as I could.

And of course I ran into Kelly. Of
course
I did.

He was filling a cup of coffee from a carafe and I ignored him, scouting for a dry
erase marker.

“Drawer by your hip,” he said.

“Thanks.” I had to turn to open it, though, and he saw.

“Whoa.” I looked up in time to catch his pale eyes growing wide. “What the fuck? Who
did that to you?”

“Not a patient.”

A glare eclipsed his icy irises. “Who, then?”

“None of your business.” I dug through the drawer. Highlighter, no. Sharpie, no.

He strode to the freezer and pulled out an ice pack, squishing the gel inside and
wrapping it in a paper towel. “Here.”

I abandoned my search, pressing the pack to my face. “Thanks.” Six more hours in my
shift, and probably twenty more times I’d have to say “no comment” when someone asked
how I’d managed to get a black eye during my lunch hour. I glanced at the gash on
Kelly’s temple, and way too many details about what had happened after he’d turned
up injured at my threshold revisited me in a breath.

“So who did that?” he demanded again, locking his dumb, huge arms over his dumb chest.

“A ’93 Tempo.”

“Where were you at lunch?”

I sighed and leaned wearily against the counter. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t.”

“I got in a fight with my sister’s asshole ex-boyfriend. He shoved me and I tripped,
and hit my eye on my side mirror.”

His own eyes narrowed. “Where is he?”

“Oh, come off it, Kelly. I don’t need some tough guy to sic on another tough guy.
I’ve had enough of your type to last a lifetime.”

“You call the cops?”

“My sister did,” I said, praying it was true. “Everything’s under control. Quit hassling
me about it.”

He stepped close and I let him take the ice pack away. He squinted at my bruise, and
I studied his eyes. They were nearly a color today, a frozen lake reflecting a clear
blue—

“
Ahhh
, ow.” I fidgeted as he pressed my brow bone, the spot tender.

“You break anything?” Press, press, press.

“I don’t think so. But my head might explode if you keep poking me.” He let me go
and gave me back the ice pack. I nearly missed his body when he stepped away. Reeling
and tired, I tried a joke. “Think this’ll earn me some cred with the residents?”

He smiled. My heart suddenly felt as swollen and bruised as my face.

“Want me to lie for you?” he asked. “Tell everyone you got that shiner doing something
tough, on the ward?”

I wandered past him and found a marker in the drawer. I wiped
lunch off-campus
from beside my name and wrote
general
in its place. “Nah. I’ll seem more badass if I leave it a mystery.”

He followed me into the hall. “I
will
get you to tell me who this guy is.”

Holding the pack in place, I shot him a one-eyed glare as the keypad beeped. I pushed
in the stairwell door. “I’m a grown-ass woman.”

“And some shit who calls himself a man gave you a black eye.”

I stopped short on the landing between floors. He was two steps behind me, and our
faces were nearly level. “What are you gonna do if I tell you, Kelly? Hunt him down
and beat the crap out of him?”

“Likely.”

“Which’ll solve what?”

“More than some slap on the wrist from the cops, if I know the type.”

“Well you don’t. You don’t know me or my sister or her problems. You don’t know anything
about us, so butt out. We don’t need rescuing.” Amber did, but that was
my
job. Today hadn’t been my finest moment, granted, but if any dog was going to snarl
and bark and bite on her behalf, it was
this
bitch. Guys only ever made things worse.

When we reached the third floor, Kelly said, “Lemme take you out for a drink after
work.”

I sighed, pausing with my keycard in hand. Did I really want to sit on a stool in
some dive, with my knee touching Kelly’s, and numb myself with a drink and a big reassuring
wall of muscle? Yeah, a little. But no way in hell did I think it was smart. Over
my shoulder I said, “I’ve seen plenty of you already this week, off the clock.”

“So see some more.”

“Quit trying to save me.”

“Who said I was?”

I tapped my card to the lock and pushed in the door, aiming myself down the hall to
the ward.

“You really wanna head to bed after the second half of your shift, look at yourself
in a mirror and try to fall asleep, thinking about all this shit? Come out for a drink.”

I punched the code to let us into the deserted lounge. “No.”

I marched toward the rec room to find Jenny and catch up with my duties, to get lost
in all the details that wouldn’t allow me to think about anything else. About Amber
or Marco or Kelly Robak.

“I’ll meet you at my truck at seven twenty,” Kelly said.

Just before I veered off for the nurses’ booth, I mouthed a
fuck off
in his direction.

And damn him to hell, he smiled. “Seven twenty it is.”

* * *

The cops from Amber’s town called me around four, and one of them came out to Larkhaven
and I gave him my statement in the staff parking lot, where he took a couple of digital
photos of my ripening bruise. I hoped something would come of it. Anything. But even
if the system was in our favor, I didn’t trust Amber to not suddenly drop charges.

At least work was quiet. And at least I had the next day off. During Saturday shifts
we didn’t have to do any inventory, which saved a ton of time. Kelly and a couple
of other orderlies were escorting some of the Starling residents to the campus chapel,
one of the rare opportunities the men got for a field trip. I’m sure the change of
scenery motivated them far more than a chance to get good with the Lord, but then
again, living in a locked ward, a few minutes’ fresh air and sunshine were probably
a damn-near religious experience. And praise Jesus for an hour free of Kelly Robak.

Once the last meds of the shift were distributed and my notes logged, Jenny told me
to go ahead and keep an eye on things in the rec room. The subtext being,
You’re a mess. Go watch TV with the patients until hand-off.

I took her up on the offer, gladly.

Having sort of won that fight with Marco and squared away the stuff with the police,
I was feeling strangely capable and strong and Zen, despite my exhaustion. Despite
fucking up and taking Marco’s bait, channeling the emotional intelligence of a four-year-old.
I plopped down in an easy chair kitty-corner from Lonnie and greeted him with a big
old smile.

His magnified eyes swiveled to my bruise. “It suits you.” He was deadpan, and I chose
not to read it as meaning he was pleased to think I’d been punched in the face.

“I may get the other side done to match,” I told him, equally deadpan.

I kept my eyes on the TV, but I was pretty sure he smiled, in my periphery.

The hand-off meeting was low-key, as it’d been a relatively calm day on the ward.
After my day-shift colleagues with minor incidents to relay had made their reports,
there was a silence, several night-shifters staring at me expectantly.

“Oh,” I said, touching my brow. “No, this was recreational.” I hadn’t meant it to
be funny, but a couple people laughed, and it actually cheered me some.

I didn’t feel like getting grilled while the group was signing out, so I changed first,
and fast. There were only two orderlies chatting in the coffee room when I logged
out, neither of them Kelly, and neither said a thing to me aside from good night.

As I pulled open the door to the lot, June had never smelled so good.

Predictably, Kelly was standing beside his truck, next to the little set of brick
steps I’d take up to the lawn. He opened the passenger side as I strode in his direction.

He patted the top of the door frame. “Ready to go, Nurse Roughneck?”

“I told you no,” I said, plainly aiming myself toward the steps.

“And I’m telling you get in.”

Fuck me,
the nerve
.

I glared at him a long time, just taking in the physically superior, bossy, heterosexual
white male aged eighteen to sixty standing before me. Like this guy didn’t already
get his way, every place he paused as he moved through the world.

It was time to draw the line. And the line went straight up the crotch of my panties.

I stopped and locked my arms over my chest, Kelly-style. “I’ve had it up to my black
eye with pushy men today, Robak. I’m going home to sleep. And I’m not answering my
door, no matter how hard anybody knocks.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

I dropped my head back, sighing loudly into the darkening sky. “Jesus.” I looked him
in the eyes. “Yeah. Fine. Whatever. Whatever will shut you up so I can go home and
collapse.”

“Six thirty,” he said, slamming the passenger door. “We’ll grab dinner.”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll grab dinner. We’ll grab
one
drink, and nothing else will get grabbed for the rest of the night.”

“Fine.”

“
Fine.
” I jammed my purse over my shoulder and marched past him and up the steps to the
lawn.

“See you then. Dress pretty.”

“Fuck off, Kelly.”

Chapter Six

Dress pretty,
Kelly’s voice echoed.

Easier said than done,
I thought, flipping through the hangers in my closet the following evening. He’d
already seen the only dress I owned; the past few years hadn’t exactly left me with
the spare time or money or energy for socializing.

Plus I was strongly tempted to dress as dumpy as possible, just to show him I didn’t
give a shit, that I wasn’t here to be ordered around, into a nice outfit or indeed,
his bed.

But fuck it. It was Sunday, my night off. I’d survived a first week that felt like
an entire month, passed a pretty lousy birthday, and been cussed out by more belligerent
men than I cared to count.

“What goes with a black eye?” I mumbled, perusing my choices. I settled on my nicest
jeans and a dressy charcoal top. I’d bought that top when I’d sensed this guy from
one of my night classes was on the verge of asking me out, excited to go on a rare
first date. He never did ask. I found my scissors and clipped the price tag from the
collar.

I put on far more eye shadow than I normally would have, hoping to camouflage my damage.
In the end it didn’t do much aside from make it appear that I was trying—and failing—to
look seductive, which was the last assumption I needed Kelly making about me.

At six twenty-five I slipped into a pair of flats and locked up.

Kelly was punctual, already leaning against his hood in the circular drive in front
of the apartments. He’d worn jeans as well, and a fatigue-green tee shirt faded nearly
to sage. For once his arms weren’t crossed like a shield, but braced behind him. He
looked as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. He gave me a little nod as I trotted down
the steps. There was summer in the air, a warm breeze that reminded me of broken teenage
curfews and a hundred once-favorite songs and forgotten crushes.

He nodded. “Evening.”

“Hey.” I stopped a few feet in front of him, glancing demonstrably around us. “Gorgeous
day.”

“More gorgeous still, that we don’t have to spend it in there.” He nodded across the
road at the Larkhaven gates, then stood up straight and went around to open my door.
“You look nice.”

I glanced at my top. “I thought the gray would bring out my bruise. How’s your temple?”

He pressed the white bandage. “’S fine. Ready to go?”

I nodded and slid into the passenger side.

“Where are we eating?” I asked him as he started up the truck.

“There’s burgers and that kind of shit at the bar, and an Italian place, and a taco
place.”

“Don’t tell me I actually get a
say
? Kelly, you spoil me. Next I’ll get to pick my own drink.”

He smirked at me then pulled us away from the curb. “You’re feisty tonight.”

“Funny what getting punched in the face by your own car does to you. And burgers are
fine.” Burgers and dim bar lighting to hide my eye, and a place I’d be able to call
familiar after this second visit.

“As you wish.”

“We’re not messing around tonight,” I informed him as we reached the main road.

“I never mess around. I’m all business in the sack.”

“Seriously. I’m not doing a thing with you tonight. And if I change my mind—which
I won’t—I’m counting on you to be gentleman enough to respect the wishes I’m laying
out right now, in this truck.”

“Fine. Not tonight. That leaves plenty of other nights.”

I sighed, watching the woods slip past and spotting a deer frozen amid the maples.
Run if you’re smart, honey.
I glanced at the hunter in the driver’s seat.
Too late.

We shot the shit about our days off, and Kelly told me a bit more about the city when
the fields fell back and mummified factories and mills rose up from the horizon. He
parked in front of Lola’s, in the very same spot as the last visit.

Again, the place was bustling despite it being a school night. We took seats at the
bar and Kelly leaned over the counter to grab me a menu.

“Seems busy for a Sunday,” I said, scanning the fare.

“Unemployment breeds boredom, breeds alcoholism.”

“That’s very cheerful, Kelly. Thank you.”

The bartender came by and Kelly looked to me.

“I’ll have a light beer, please.” I said it perkily, with a big smile in Kelly’s direction.
When the bartender left us to pour I asked, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

He shrugged. “I’ll pick my battles.” He said it in a cocky, lazy way that implied
those battles would most definitely be waged betwixt my spread thighs.

Our beers arrived, and I ordered a cheeseburger and onion rings.

“So,” he said. “Who gave you that shiner? What’s his name?”

Marco lived forty miles away on the other side of Larkhaven, but I wasn’t giving Kelly
a scrap to go on.

“I’m not telling you. Bad enough
I
get dragged into my sister’s drama. I don’t need my coworkers joining the party.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, irises motley neon once again. “That all I am to you?
Your coworker?”

“What would you prefer? Friends? Mentor and student?”

“Lovers?”

“More like dodged bullets.”

“You can’t dodge me forever.”

“Watch me try,” I told him, and sipped my beer.

Amused, he shook his head. I stared at him while he drank.
He really is handsome, once you get used to the scars and catch him smiling. I really
would like to sleep with him.

But bossy prick or not, Kelly was good enough a guy that my head would get all murky,
if we fucked. I’d get a crush on him, no matter how passionately I swore to myself
I wouldn’t. And once he pounced, brought me down, sucked the marrow from my bones
and licked his fingers clean, then what? A prize won, more likely than not. A box
checked. And his lost interest would hurt all the more, because I’d have seen it coming
a mile off.
Run, little deer. And keep on running.

Our food arrived before long. My burger tasted like pure, meaty, cheesy decadence
after a week’s worth of frozen dinners nuked in the crusty communal microwave. I caught
Kelly eyeing me and wiped the mustard I felt at the edge of my mouth. He licked the
same spot on his own lips, a subconscious-looking reflex.

“Jesus, you’re sexy when you eat.”

I had to stifle a laugh to keep from spitting out my food. I swallowed and took a
drink of beer. “It’s a hell of a burger. It’s literally the most delicious thing I’ve
eaten in months.”

Kelly licked his lips again, gaze falling to my lap for the briefest moment. The gestures
murmured words his lips withheld.
Bet you taste just as good. Why not come home with me and spread those pretty legs
and let me find out?
And for a few seconds the burger turned to cardboard, all my focus lost in imagining
being devoured by Kelly’s brazen mouth. That first evening we shared a drink at this
bar, I’d probably have assumed he was of a douchey persuasion that didn’t reciprocate,
downtown. But that night in my bedroom had taught me Kelly would be only too happy
to contradict any assumptions I was tempted to make about his sexual agenda.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I warned him, the beer making me bold.

“Look at you how?”

“Like I’m wearing edible underwear, and there’s a place card in my panties with your
name on it.”

He leaned in closer, and God help me, I could smell him. He smelled like beer and
sin and rumpled sheets, like every bad decision I’d never made, with a whiskey chaser.
His eyes were steady. Cold as ice, hot and dangerous as a brush fire.

“What?”

“Come to my place, some weekend.” His voice was low and deadly serious.

“What for?”

“Sex.”

I snorted. “Don’t be coy now, Kel. Spell it out for me.”

“Come to my place and be mine. For a weekend.”

“What? Like a carpet shampooer? You’ll have to put down a deposit.” I reached for
my beer, but he took the glass and set it back down. “Jeez.”

“I’m not kidding. I’m asking.”

“Asking, or ordering?”

“I’m inviting you. Come over. We’ll scratch whatever this itch is we’re both dealing
with.”

Itch scratched, curiosity satisfied, waning interest imminent the second he comes . . .
and my soft female heart still invested, no matter how much detachment I swore to
myself I’d muster.

Was that such a high price to pay, though—a minor broken heart? In exchange for possibly
mind-blowing sex? I’d never had mind-blowing sex before. I’d had good sex, romantic
and tender and occasionally pretty passionate, but I knew just from looking in his
eyes that it had been the minor leagues. And I hadn’t been called off the bench in
ages . . .

Still. “No, thank you. We don’t even get real weekends. We both work Saturdays.”

“Next time we got two days off in a row, I mean.” That would be this coming Thursday
and Friday. “And why not?”

“I’m not as simple as you. I don’t want to have a one-night stand with someone I have
to see twelve hours a day at work.”

Stony faced, he wiggled a pair of fingers. “Two nights.”

I sighed, and this time, he let me sip my beer.

He leaned on the bar, arm flexed, head resting on his hand. “I know you feel this,
too.”

“If everyone acted on every impulse they had, we’d all be obese and syphilitic and
a hundred grand in debt from the home-shopping channel.”

“When’s the last time you spent a whole weekend just fucking?”

I laughed. “Never. Who does that?”

“We could.”

“That sounds very . . . abrasive.”

“Sex doesn’t have to be some chore you do on Saturday nights after your husband rubs
your feet. Come over, and let me show you a good time. Lemme have my way with you,
like in your bed the other night. Was that really so bad?”

My traitorous lady-parts gave an eager squeeze, and for a split second, I felt my
gaze turn glassy and unfocused as I remembered the mean, rough thrust of Kelly’s thick
cock between my thighs. He caught me.

“See?”

I wasn’t sold yet, but I
was
curious. “Have your way with me, you said?”

He nodded. “Just let me be my bossy, demanding self, and I swear you won’t regret
a second of it.”

“Bossy how, exactly?” He’d been that way when we’d messed around and I couldn’t say
I hadn’t enjoyed it . . . but he meant something else, I could tell. Something more.
“Like, rough me up?”

“No, not really. I like it rough, but not any more than a woman wants. I just like
doing what I want, when I want. Without permission, in the moment.”

I frowned at “without permission” and it wasn’t lost on him.

“Nothing you’re not up for, or into. I just like issuing orders and having them followed,
and taking what I want.”

“How would you know I was up for it, if you just took whatever, the second you felt
like it?”

“By talking to you beforehand, like this. And picking a signal or a safe word, so
you can pull the plug. It’s the illusion of control I want, not actually forcing anyone
to do something they’re not into.”

“Jesus Christ. The last thing I need is to go home with a guy who’s got safe words.
Can’t sex just be
simple
?”

“What’s not simple about a single word? Free insurance policy that’ll save you a year
of therapy bills, on the off chance I take things someplace you’re not up for. I’ll
even let you pick it,” he added, bobbing his eyebrows.

“I’m not interested in sex that comes with a danger of psychological trauma, thanks.
I already get that thrill from the ward.”

“I’m a decent guy. You said it yourself.”

“I believe you’re a trustworthy enough man.” I trusted him with my safety, after all,
twelve hours a day. “But I seriously don’t see what’s in it for me.” I pictured his
body, sprawled across my covers.
Liar.

He smiled at that. “You think that when I say I like getting whatever I want, that
a woman’s pleasure isn’t one of those things?”

His answer gave me pause, and Kelly’s grin deepened. That smile, rare as a rainbow.
It softened his hard features and faded his scars, made my heart feel swollen in my
chest. Damn him.

“Didn’t I make you feel good, that night in your room?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “You did.” Twice. But I resented the hard sell, having a man trying
to talk me into something as personal as sex.

Kelly’s gaze shifted past my shoulder as he thought. “Think of it like this.” His
eyes swiveled back to mine. “When I say I want to possess a woman for a day, maybe
a whole weekend, it’s like I’m inviting her to a dinner party. I’m making exactly
the food I want, serving the drinks I like, planning everything. But she’s the guest.
Just because I’m in charge doesn’t mean I won’t serve her a damn good meal.”

I shook my head.

“What else would you do with your time off? Babysit?”

“Probably.”

“Think about it. An entire two days without being asked to make a single decision.”

I gave him a dry look. “Two entire days taking orders for someone else’s enjoyment.”

It was Kelly’s turn to sigh. “Okay,” he said, holding up in his hands in surrender.
“I’m not going to bully you into it—”

“No, I’m sure you’d save the bullying for once I was at your place, ready for my glamorous
weekend as your sex slave.”

“Jesus, you need to get laid.”

Exasperated, I slid my nearly cleaned plate toward the taps and stood, but Kelly grabbed
my wrist and tugged me back to sitting with a jolt. I shot him a glare.
You did
not
just do that.

“Listen. I like you. And I want you. I’m inviting you to come over so we can explore
the thing that’s between us. I know you feel it, same as me. I’m offering you a chance
to shut your brain off for a weekend, so we can spoil each other’s bodies rotten.
Let me boss you around and I promise you’ll find out I give twice as good as I get.
I’m not gonna try to fuck your ass or dress you up like a hooker—”

“Be still my heart. Kelly Robak, you charmer, you.”